A Community Level Theory of Organizational Resistance to Anti Smoking Regulation

Abstract

This study aims to investigate organizations’ resistance to the introduction of new legislation in an established institutional field, which exhibits an intriguing combination of both high consensus as well as intense contestation. Specifically it focuses on smoking regulations affecting the hospitality industry. We include economic reasons, activism, local institutional endowments and the role of communities to explain the resistance of small bars to a legally sanctioned smoking ban. We collected data from all 431 municipalities in the Netherlands. We make two contributions. First, we examine how resistance from some of the field’s actors led to a situation where a powerful actor was unable to impose the isomorphic adoption of new legislation. Second, to understand why some organizations resist strong legal pressures whereas others do not, we also look at the role of local communities in influencing the resistance of organizations.